Nexenta Demonstrates Continued Support for OpenSolaris

Hosting Toolbox – MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – Nexenta Systems, the leader in Open Storage solutions, today announced that Garrett D’Amore, a former Sun engineer and the leading contributor to the OpenSolaris operating system for the past five years, and Richard Elling, a notable ZFS expert, have joined Nexenta to help drive innovation and development of the NexentaStor software platform. NexentaStor is the leading hardware independent storage solution built on the breakthrough open source ZFS file system.

D’Amore brings over 15 years of software engineering experience to Nexenta with a special focus on Solaris/OpenSolaris kernel and I/O subsystems. With over 20 years in the industry, Elling has extensive knowledge in network computing and complex systems design, leading globally distributed teams and technical sales support. D’Amore and Elling join other notable Solaris developers who are making the move to Nexenta to continue their mission of delivering Open Storage solutions based on OpenSolaris. These Open Storage solutions, as delivered by Nexenta and by an extensive development community, provide enterprise capabilities that go way beyond legacy proprietary vendors at a fraction of the cost.

“Nexenta represents an ideal opportunity and challenge for me to continue my work of driving the development and direction of OpenSolaris,” said Garrett D’Amore, senior director of engineering. “In just two years, Nexenta has become a leader in Open Storage, but the addition of Bill Moore, co-founder of ZFS, to their advisory board and the recent launch of their breakthrough NexentaStor 3.0 software, made them the obvious career choice moving forward.”

Throughout his career, D’Amore has held a number of software engineering positions at leading technology companies in the Silicon Valley. Prior to joining Nexenta, D’Amore worked for Sun Microsystems, acquired by Oracle in April 2009, as one of the lead engineers on the Solaris x86/x64 team for four years. At Sun, he spearheaded a number of key initiatives, including the addition of SDcard support and next generation audio features to the Solaris operating system. Before Sun, D’Amore was an architect and principal software engineer for network technologies, thin-client, and mobile server products at Tadpole Computer Inc. which was purchased by General Dynamics in August 2005. D’Amore has also architected Solaris support for platforms ranging from million-dollar enterprise servers to desktop and laptop platforms, and technologies ranging from high-availability features to record-breaking cryptographic and network acceleration.

Prior to joining Nexenta, Elling worked for Richard Elling Consulting where he leveraged his expertise in technologies such as ZFS to help companies like Nexenta enhance their solutions and train users. Most notably, Elling spent more than 16 years at Sun Microsystems developing appliance product solutions that incorporated hardware and software from Sun and third party suppliers. Elling was also a performance and availability engineer for Sun’s entire product line, including software and hardware systems integration.

“Nexenta is poised to transform the storage industry,” said Elling, director of solutions engineering. “I am excited to contribute to this process by helping partners, resellers and customers develop open, enterprise-class storage solutions leveraging the breakthrough capabilities of the NexentaStor platform.”

“It’s critical that Nexenta retain and attract industry experts like Garrett and Richard who can contribute to the rapid development and innovation of NexentaStor software that our partners and customers have come to expect,” said Evan Powell, CEO of Nexenta. “With Garrett, Richard, Bill Moore and former GlassHouse executive Rick Hayes now on board, we will increase our contribution to OpenSolaris while also further accelerating development of NexentaStor.”

About Nexenta Systems
Founded in 2005 and privately held, Nexenta Systems, Inc., has developed NexentaStor™, the leading open storage enterprise class hardware independent storage solution and sponsors NexentaCore, an open source operating system that combines the high performance and reliability of OpenSolaris with the ease-of-use and breadth of applications of Linux. Both solutions leverage the revolutionary file system ZFS.

Nexenta is an official member of the Oracle Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: ORCL) Partner Advantage program. Nexenta’s products have achieved VMware Ready status with VMware, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC), CitrixReady status with Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS), and other certifications.

More information about Nexenta Systems, Inc. and free trials of the ZFS-based NexentaStor can be found at www.nexenta.com or call: (877) 862-7770.